I’m not an expert on the federal debt ceiling arguments but I do understand this: If I incur a personal expense, I have to pay it or the consequences can be severe. If I take a mortgage but then don’t pay it, the bank will take back my house. Common sense says the same should apply in Washington.

Yet abrogating our responsibility as a nation to pay for programs Congress has already approved is exactly what Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., demands. Toomey advocates defaulting by refusing to raise the debt ceiling, saying “we Republicans need to be willing to tolerate a temporary government shutdown.”

He is not alone. This sentiment has been echoed by other GOP politicians who want to hold the debt ceiling hostage in return for ideologically driven cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

For two years experts from academia, the Treasury Department, the Congressional Budget Office and the business community have warned in stark terms of the consequences. Should Toomey’s plan succeed, we would see a recessionary drop in spending at best, and a calamitous debt default at worst, pushing the country into the Great Depression 2.0.

History demonstrates that cutting spending in the face of a slow recovery is a prescription for disaster. Herbert Hoover cut spending during the Great Depression and the result was an economic disaster far deeper than it needed to be. It’s well past time for Republicans to reject the utter incoherence of Toomey’s position.